


a voice like baying hounds

by Elsin



Series: Lay of the Lioness [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Series - murkybluematter, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: @ao3 why do u hate my formatting around italics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Revelations, Rigelverse, Secrets, Series: The Song of the Lioness, The Futile Facade, The Pureblood Pretense, me constantly rewriting sotl scenes for this au and calling it art: pls no judge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 07:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/pseuds/Elsin
Summary: "...wouldn't I know if I was in the hand of this Goddess?"Only if and when she chooses to tell you so.
Series: Lay of the Lioness [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1432702
Comments: 1
Kudos: 57





	a voice like baying hounds

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before chapter two of _your heart on the line_, and mostly after chapter one.

After the Black City, the final task seemed terribly anticlimactic. Rigel tried to pay attention to it, she did—after all, she couldn’t help but try her hardest, with how the Vow tugged at her—but still she was distracted. After their return, she’d reluctantly shed her ring, but somehow her hand felt bare without it.

She won Riddle’s tournament, because of _ course _ she did. She’d only ever had to be mediocre to do so.

Riddle held her up before the world as _ Arcturus Rigel Black, pureblood supreme_—and it burned in her. It burned her away to dust, but she bit her lip till it bled and said not a word.

_ Someday_, she vowed to herself. Someday she would tell him, somehow. Rigel found she didn’t quite care as much anymore that telling him would mean her arrest.

The final days in Persopolis whirled by, and then she was going back, and everything was different even though next to nothing had _ changed_.

After demons and Tasks, the rest of the year blurred by. Rigel passed her classes without really thinking about it. Her mind was a million miles away.

Her relationship with Draco was stilted and awkward, and with Pansy it was nearly as bad. They were trying, but—well. She wasn’t who they’d thought her to be. Of course it was difficult for them.

In the middle of the exam period, Miriam Taylor, a third-year Ravenclaw, was revealed as a halfblood, and once more Rigel felt an impotent rage rise in her; that her classmates would be revealed, one by one, while _ she _ remained untouched in the face of the awful laws all of them were subjected to—

It burned in her, but there was nothing she could _ do _ about it. She was only one halfblood girl, after all.

For the first time in a long time, she was relieved to go home for the summer. At least there she didn’t have to tiptoe around her two best friends.

* * *

But even returning home didn’t have quite the results she would have desired. Even there, her façade was crumbling away from her. Remus knew, now, and so did Leo, and yet somehow no one else knew.

Maybe they just didn’t want to know. Maybe they just didn’t think about it. Harry wished that that was an option for her.

She was sixteen; she was fourteen. She was Rigel Black; she was Harry Potter. She was Riddle’s precious pureblood Champion—but she was a halfblood.

Her parents loved her dearly, but they’d never before felt so far away as they did that summer.

All of which was to say that Harry was feeling stifled to the point of suffocation in her house; it was bad enough that she decided, finally, that she _ had _ to get out. And this time the Lower Alleys wouldn’t cut it; it was different, away, but she was Harry there, the dueler, the potion-maker, and _ people still knew her_.

So instead she told her parents that she was going to Hermione’s house for a day or two, and went to the Lower Alleys for a Portkey.

* * *

The Portkey took her to the Forest of Dean. Its return function wouldn’t activate until noon the next day. She was well and truly _ alone_.

Harry had never bothered to learn very much about wilderness survival, though she didn’t imagine it would come up. She’d brought her potions bag with her—she never went without it—and it had water and food in it, just as it always did.

Her walk through the woods was relaxing in a deeply foreign way; maybe she should have worried about that, that she was never otherwise so relaxed. She didn’t. She didn’t let herself; this wasn’t the time for that. But the Forest of Dean was a muggle forest. There were no monsters here, human or otherwise. There were animals, of course, but _ those _ were never what Harry had feared.

It was nearing sunset when the sky clouded over, and the first drops of rain began to fall. Harry scowled at the sky. She didn’t mind rain, not really, but she didn’t fancy being wet all night, and so she began to search for a quick shelter. It went on long enough that she thought she’d have to make her own when she saw it—the willow on the hill.

It wasn’t much of a hill, but the willow was huge and twisted and old, and its branches were thick and wide, and when she ducked under it—it wasn’t a _ Whomping _ willow, just an ordinary one—she realized she’d been right: there was no rain falling here.

She sat on a gnarled root, and wished wistfully for the bluebell fire she’d seen Hermione light in a jar a time or three, or the ability to make a fire the muggle way, or, most of all, to be seventeen. She didn’t know, actually, when the Trace would leave her; she didn’t know if it went by calendar time or lived time. Maybe Snape could tell her.

Or maybe not. Harry didn’t know if it was a good idea to ask him; he might then expect Rigel to do things, and if he ran into Archie and expected the same of him that could be problematic.

Her musings were interrupted by a loud, high-pitched mew; she looked around, but with night falling it took her longer than she would have liked for her to see the bedraggled black kitten pawing at one of her practical brewing boots.

“Oh, hello,” she said, as if the kitten could understand her. Maybe she’d gotten a bit too used to her snakes. “It’s a terrible night to be out, you know, for a thing your size. I don’t think I mind so much, but I chose it. I can’t imagine _ you _ did.”

The kitten blinked, and stared straight at her, and suddenly Harry thought she understood what people meant about her true eyes being arresting. The kitten’s eyes were _ violet_, and if that was a natural eye color on cats she’d eat her cauldron. Maybe it was part-kneazle, or something. It mewled piteously, and she laughed slightly, and picked it up.

“Oh, poor thing,” she murmured. “You’re skin and bones, aren’t you.” She scratched the kitten behind its ears, and it purred, stretching to rub into her hand. “Hmm,” she said absently, and with her free hand fished around in her potions bag to find something that a cat might be able to eat.

She found something for it eventually, and it ate gladly; she found something for herself too, and ate as well as she could. After that she found she was very tired, more tired than she’d thought herself to be.

Harry curled up between the roots of the willow tree, using her potions bag as a pillow, and held the kitten in her arms as she fell asleep.

* * *

She woke under a willow tree just slightly more gnarled than the one she’d fallen asleep under, sitting cross-legged in front of a low fire. The kitten had crawled into her lap and she petted him absentmindedly.

When she looked up, she saw a tall figure, cloaked and hooded, standing across the fire from her. Her heartbeat quickened, and she swallowed, but the only other thing she changed was her hands: she closed her fingers tightly around her wand, though she didn’t draw it out.

“May I be of service?” she asked warily.

“I saw your fire through the trees,” said the woman, tossing back her hood to reveal a face of unearthly beauty. Her voice was soft and husky, like the wind in the treetops—and yet it was also like a pack of hounds belling in the hunt, like the huntress urging them on. Harry’s ears hurt at that voice, but not overwhelmingly so. She frowned at the newcomer. “May I sit?” asked the woman.

“I suppose,” said Harry, for she had no good reason to refuse, and the woman smiled at her, sitting smoothly with a boneless grace that Harry couldn’t hope to emulate.

“And so, my daughter,” said the stranger, “you are now an apprentice to Severus Snape.”

Harry stared. The daughter comment wasn’t hard, even if it _ was _ a little odd—at home for the summer, she didn’t bother to flatten her chest, after all, and her small breasts were plainly visible under her lightweight shirt. But _ Rigel Black _ was the only official apprentice of Severus Snape, as everyone knew, and Rigel Black was a boy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally, voice flat, and the woman smiled gently.

“Ah, but you do,” she said. “In the summers, you play the part of Harriett Potter, noble halfblood girl. But in the school year you play the part of a supposed pureblood boy at Hogwarts while your cousin, the real Arcturus Black, replaces you at the American Institute of Magic.”

The kitten jumped from Harry’s lap, where she’d clenched her shaking hands into fists, and pawed at the woman’s knee. She picked him up, and stroked him gently.

“Hush, little one,” she said. “She only needs a moment or two to adjust to her fear.”

“I’m not afraid,” Harry snapped. The woman favored her with a skeptical look, and she sighed and looked away from her, staring into the fire. “All right, fine. I’m afraid. Happy? It’s not like you just laid out a plot that, if it were true, would at best give me a one-way ticket to Azkaban.” She paused, still gazing at the fire, while she gathered her thoughts. “You have me at a disadvantage,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, though you seem to know me.”

“You have not guessed?” said the woman. “Look at me, child.” And Harry did as she was bade. The woman’s eyes were green, greener even than Harry’s own, and seemed somehow deeper than any eyes she’d seen before. “Can’t you see the truth?” asked the woman, and an echo of the pain she’d felt in the Black City rippled through Harry, who swallowed hard.

“Goddess,” she said in a half-whisper, “Great Mother, Dark Lady…” She frowned. “So you’re this Goddess that Draco’s spell referred to. And the one the Ysandir did too.”

“Yes,” said the Goddess.

“I never heard of any Goddess being real before,” Harry informed her. “Let alone coming down to visit us mere mortals. Why are you here?”

“The wheel turns,” said the Goddess cryptically. “We have slept for so very, very long—but we are awakening. The world, my daughter, is about to change.”

“Great,” said Harry sarcastically. “Vague warnings and nonsense. How helpful.”

“And you are covering your fear again,” said the Goddess, and Harry scowled.

“Can’t you let my fear alone?” she asked. “I never asked you to come marching into my life.”

“No,” said the Goddess. “Indeed, you ask for very little. But I cannot let your fear alone, either—for there are fears of yours which must be dealt with. You fear love of all kinds—I do not say this to press you to _ romantic _ love. That will come in time, should you be suited to it. But you also hold yourself apart from your parents, your uncles, your mentor—you do not feel you deserve even the love of your two-year-old sister.”

“But I’m _ lying _ to them,” said Harry quietly. “I’m lying to all of them—well, nearly all of them—and I—how can I deserve their love if all I do is _ lie _ to them?” The kitten jumped from the Goddess’s lap and came to butt its head into her knee; she smiled ruefully at it and scratched its ears, as it bid her to do.

“And they love you still, those who know,” said the Goddess. “As for your parents—do you imagine you could do anything on this scale to reduce their love for you?”

“No,” said Harry, “probably not, at least in the purest sense. But—” She shook her head. “You’re a goddess. It’s different for you.”

“If you do not wish to discuss it further, I will not press you,” said her companion. “But think on what I have said.” She smiled at Harry, just a bit too perfect to be entirely natural. “That is not your only fear, however. You also fear Tom Riddle.”

Harry frowned at her. “I should think that was obvious,” she said. “He’s got the power to hurt me and my family. He doesn’t like me—he wants to _ control _ me, I think. And he’s reckless enough to not care too much when his schemes put _ schoolchildren _ at risk en masse. Of course I’m afraid of him.”

“Listen to your fear, in this case,” said the Goddess. “But do not let it control you! Tom Riddle is a dangerous man, but if you let your fear control you it will only allow him to further his goals.”

“All right, then,” said Harry, though it wasn’t really anything she’d not thought of herself before.

“Before I go, I have a gift for you,” said the Goddess, and then before Harry could say a word she reached into the fire and drew out a burning coal. “Take this, my daughter.” And she held it out to Harry.

It ought to have seemed mad, to take a still-burning ember from anyone’s hand. And yet—Harry could heal burns, after all. So it was without much fear that she accepted the ember, only to find that it was nearly cold.

She drew it closer to examine it, and found that the ember yet burned in a shell of what seemed to be some sort of thin crystal. One side stretched out to make a tiny loop, the sort she could thread a chain through. Curious.

When she looked up to ask her companion about it, she found that she was alone but for the kitten, and suddenly very tired; she curled up by the fire and slept with the kitten curled next to her, one hand wrapped around the ember-stone.

* * *

Harry woke in the cold dawn light, back stiff from sleeping on the cold ground. The kitten mewled plaintively at being woken, and she sighed at it.

“That was the strangest dream I’ve ever had,” she told it. “And you were there, too. Care to explain?”

The kitten sniffed, and did not deign to offer an explanation. Harry pushed herself up to sitting, and only then did she notice that she held something in her hand.

She uncurled her fingers, and in her hand she saw the burning ember-stone. The one from her _ dream_. The one the Goddess had handed to her. A chill went down her spine.

It had not been only a dream, as she had thought it to be.

“There’s something not quite right about this place,” she told the kitten. “Are you coming with me? I’m getting out of here.” She wasn’t quite sure why she spoke to it so, as if it were a snake that could answer her back.

_ I’m coming_, said the kitten, and Harry froze, staring.

“Did you just… talk?” she asked faintly, and the kitten flicked his tail.

_ Of course_, he said. _ Don’t look so surprised_. _ You talk to snakes, do you not? _

“Yes, but—that’s different,” said Harry. “I’m a Parselmouth. It’s a _ thing_. Cat-speak isn’t a thing as far as I know, and if it is then it doesn’t run in the family.”

_ Maybe I’m just a strange familiar_, said the kitten. He jumped at her then and crawled his way up her sleeve to sit on her left shoulder. _ Are we leaving? _

“Yes,” said Harry, “and you know—you really ought to _ ask _ before jumping on a person like that.” Since you _ can_, she didn’t say.

_ I am a cat_, said the kitten. _ We do not “ask.” _

Harry laughed helplessly at that, and descended the hill.

* * *

No one questioned her story of staying with Hermione, though Archie did look at her askance. Most of the focus was instead on the kitten.

“Can I keep him?” she asked. “I found him in Diagon Alley all alone.”

“He’ll be your responsibility,” said Dad warningly, while Mum frowned.

“I don’t know if you can take him across the ocean, sweetie,” she said.

“That’s all right,” she said quickly, actually relieved at the objection. “He can go to Hogwarts with Archie, right?”

“Sure,” said her cousin, briefly looking up from a Healing textbook before returning to it. “I can take the cat.”

“That’s all right then,” said Mum. “What are you going to call him?”

“Blackie,” Remus suggested.

“How about Pounce?” asked Sirius.

“No, no,” said Harry, shaking her head. They weren’t bad names, per se, but they didn’t feel right to her.

“What about Sirius?” said Archie, grinning widely. Harry laughed. As Sirius gasped in mock-offense, her cousin added, “He’s like a tiny, feline version of you, Dad.”

“I think… Faithful,” said Harry, her laughter subsiding. Faithful mewed proudly, rubbing against her ankle. Dad laughed at the sight.

* * *

When she went to the Lower Alleys later that day, she went alone. She didn’t yet want to take Faithful to such a place—and besides she needed to talk to Mrs. Hurst. Faithful, much as she loved him already, would serve as a distraction from that.

Harry managed to make her way to Maywell without running into anyone, and she was glad of that; she was tired and nervous and distinctly not in the mood to talk to anyone besides Mrs. Hurst.

“Tea?” asked Mrs. Hurst once Harry was sitting in her office, and Harry nodded.

“Sure,” she said. She waited while Mrs. Hurst gathered the kettle and tea, and while they waited for it to boil she sighed and rubbed her forehead. The ember-stone sat heavy in her bag, next to the crystal ring.

“Why are you here?” asked Mrs. Hurst. “You don’t tend to come here for the joy of it, not like your friend Hermione.”

“I went out in the woods yesterday,” said Harry quietly as Mrs. Hurst poured her tea, and she wrapped her hands around her mug although it was nearly too hot to do so. “And I slept under a willow tree, and I dreamt that I met a goddess. She handed me an ember from the fire in my dream, and when I woke—” She shook her head, and pulled out the ember-stone. “When I woke this was in my hand. You mentioned a _ Goddess _ once, I think, so—I don’t know anyone else to ask about this.”

Mrs. Hurst reached out carefully to touch the ember-stone, but no sooner had she touched it than she hissed sharply and withdrew her hand, looking at Harry with an odd light in her eyes.

“Poor child,” she said. “The Goddess has Her hand on you, I’d say. As for the Goddess—well. She’s from an old pantheon; not many recall their names. And that stone is most certainly a divine token. Keep it close. It will help you, I’m certain.” She paused then, giving Harry a measuring look. “Don’t tell me you’ve been going to school in America, keeping your head down like a good little halfblood. You needn’t tell me the _ truth_, but you cannot be doing _ that_.”

Harry opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it again, and sipped at her tea as she thought. When she opened her mouth to speak again, it was, surprisingly even to her, the truth that came out. She was so _ tired _ of all the lies.

“If Riddle knew who I really was he’d be tearing his hair out,” she said bitterly. “I’m not—you know I’m not at school in America. You never believed that.” She turned the ember-stone over and over in her fingers as she spoke. “I didn’t tell you where I _ was _ going to school, though. Where I _ am _ going to school.” Harry swallowed down her fear, and said, “At school they call me Rigel Black.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Hurst.

“And—Archie, my cousin, who’s meant to be at Hogwarts—he’s Harry Potter at AIM. That’s why Hermione has a school friend called Harry.” She shook her head, and the whole story came spilling out, how she’d wanted so badly to study Potions and Archie had so longed to learn to heal, how it had spiraled so very, very far out of control, how Leo and Remus had learnt of her ruse from her fighting style, which she hadn’t been able to disguise well enough.

When Leo had spoken to her, she’d been awash in emotions, and when Remus had spoken with her she’d still been floundering, and _ he _ had hardly been better—she’d been able to read that on him and it had been a terrible thing to see. Draco she’d hardly had a chance to _ discuss _ things with, and telling Pansy had been almost awful though she’d known it to be _ necessary _ for maintaining her friendship. But Mrs. Hurst sat across from her, calmly taking in everything she said, making no judgements of her choices as far as Harry could see.

Finally, raggedly, she reached the Black City in her tale. “They implied that I couldn’t have done all I’ve done alone,” she said. “That I’d had some sort of divine aid. And Draco’s spell called upon a Goddess to come to our aid, and something answered that call. And I mean—I already told you about the meeting I had in the forest.”

“I don’t know if divine aid is necessary for a plan such as yours,” said Mrs. Hurst. “I am only a healer, after all. But you are certainly an exceptional young woman, Harry, and while I can’t say what, exactly, is the reason for the Goddess to have reached out to you, I _ can _ say that in every old story of mortals chosen by gods, they were all exceptional in one way or another.” 

Harry scowled into her tea, and said, “I never _ asked _ to be special, you know. All I wanted to do was brew potions.”

Mrs. Hurst laughed at that for a brief moment before sobering again. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “If I know anything at all, I know this—_you _ were never going to be an ordinary girl, no matter how you wished it to be so.”

“Still,” said Harry crossly, “that doesn’t mean I can’t _ dream _ of it.”

* * *

Before going home, she stopped by the custom metalwork shop where she’d gotten her suppressor ring and purchased a thin chain to hang the ember-stone on. She did so promptly and hung it around her neck, tucking it under her shirt.

She had the whole summer ahead of her, and she could only hope the rest of it would be a _ little _ less exciting than the first stretch had been.

**Author's Note:**

> if y'all thought my penchant for convoluted and/or archaic language was bad in what you actually see, rest assured that it would be at least twice as bad without mercury metaphorically slapping my hands away from the keyboard lmao. what are betas for if not to make your work _actually readable?_  
harry: I've only known faithful for a day but if anything happened to him I would burn wizarding Britain to the ground and throw myself into a self-imposed exile.


End file.
